I rarely ever write about television anymore—or any form of popular culture, for that matter—and I don’t necessarily engage in fandom as much either, but I’ve been faithfully watching something kind of vapid with my sister. This week, Pretty Little Liars‘ second season came to a close. And now you know why I have been painfully carrying this obsession. And now I am going to take a break and write about this dumb show that I love watching so much.

Possible spoilers under the cut

My mom had an old Olympus Pen from her dad, and I wanted to use it, but when we went to have it cleaned, we were told that it didn’t work anymore. In pursuit of a nice half-frame camera, I browsed through online sellers but Sarie got me a surprise second-hand Pen EE from Hidalgo!

Here are a few of shots from the test roll. It was loaded with an unexpired Kodak Pro Image 100 roll, and I overestimated its ability to capture images in low light since my LC-A+ does pretty good with 100 ASA film. It’s a single focus camera as well, so a lot of my other shots were well-lit but quite blurry. I’ll try to remember this next time! It was a good test run. Mostly, I was just shooting random things to get the roll developed because I was so anxious to see how they turned out!

Click to see the rest of the shots

Ah! I’ve been looking forward to Jacob Lindo’s show ever since I learned of it. He always seems to come up with really great ideas and compositions for collages, and a part of me definitely envies that, as someone who makes collages as well. The first of his works I’ve seen were the ones he made for ManilArt, and I guess I was expecting work more similar to that. For Partial Proof, he went into another direction, but retained a certain similarity to his previous work.

I posted about an exhibit on Roberto Chabet’s collages, and someone made a comment saying that he couldn’t really relate to it. The opposite happens with me, because I’m extremely drawn to collages. When someone, in my head, gets it right, I’m just going to keep talking about it and gush. Jacob Lindo has managed to craft three arresting series, all in one show.

More pictures & the rest of the West shows

I was going through old pictures that I took in high school with my FM2 and Super Sampler (my weapons of choice in those days) because I wanted to post a few memories. I like these photos of two beautiful people that I’ve known for almost ten years.

We took a photography class when Petra and I were juniors, Nash a senior. That’s why we were bringing around cameras a lot, I think. Anyway, enjoy. It’s nice to have these reminders once in a while.

There are a handful of local musicians that I respect and love with all my heart, so it’s always a joy for me to see them get opportunities to be heard in other places of the world. Outerhope (which, if I’m not mistaken, I got to hear at a high school fair I went to… when I was in college*) was invited to be part of this year’s NYC Popfest, but they needed help with funds, since it’s such a long way to travel.

Attraction! Reaction! organized this event to help raise funds. Aside from wanting to help out people whose music I believed in, I noticed that EGGBOY WAS PLAYING. I love Eggboy, Diego Mapa’s solo project pre-Tarsius, and so you can imagine how excited I am.

They sold merch such as Number Line totes, Outerhope’s CDs, and posters of the show. I don’t even have any more walls left, but I got 2 posters. Thankfully, they set up a project on ArtisteConnect, if you find it in your heart to help them with funding.

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* I don’t even know what I had been doing there, so don’t ask me.

Click for the rest of the photos

On the last day of Imagining Identity, Sarie and I passed by Finale. Good thing we went when we did! They were taking down the exhibit already; the video room’s display was completely gone when we got there. We made a quick pass of the pieces, and Sarie lent me her Canon S95 as we hurriedly made rounds. It was so overwhelming because there were so many. Imagining Identity is a selection of Paulino Que’s collection of artists’ self portraits. Most are commissioned, I think, but some of them were acquired posthumously.

He released a book, too. These are just one hundred pieces, chosen from his entire collection. I’m not sure how many there are in total, but isn’t that crazy? There are quite a few stand-outs, but I didn’t care for a lot of them either. I wonder how he picks people to make art for him.

MM Yu and Nona Garcia

The exhibit’s sadly down already; I’m kind of regretting that I put it off until the very last minute, because I would have totally written about it if I had gone earlier, just so that more people will have (hopefully) stopped by to see the collection. Really quite a few were stunning and clever. It’s hard for some artists to render self portraits or just figures of people in general, because their style does not permit or because it’s hard to just sit down and make a likeness of yourself.

I think part of my awe also comes from the fact that one person owns all of these works. And it’s not even the entire collection. Amazing. Personally, I think it’s a really good idea for a collection. The book, “Imagining Identity,” was published under Finale, but last I heard, it’s sold out already. I’m not sure if it’s a limited edition run, but if it isn’t maybe they can do a second printing if people really want it in their lives. It’s pretty hefty.

You can read more about the show on Finale’s website.

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